“You may be sure I’ll not do that. But one thing I am going to tell if I have to do it with my dying breath: I shall tell Sylvester Simpson that he is a pompous old idiot.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE QUARREL NEXT DOOR
Josie was right; the song of the frogs meant spring was on the way—in the air—in the ground—in one’s bones. The Leslies’ apartment was hot, hot to suffocation. The janitor, following in the footsteps of most janitors, had made up an extra hot fire in the furnace because it was Sunday and because it was a warm Sunday. When Josie sought the quiet of her own room to escape the reiterated wailings of Mrs. Leslie and to read her precious little book, she found the atmosphere oppressively heavy. To escape it she raised her window and leaned far out, drinking deep of the soft spring air. The little back yard was showing signs of coming to life. A brave little daffodil had poked a green nose up through the black earth and a foolish peach tree actually had a few precocious buds on one of its slender branches.
“They’ll be nipped and deserve to be,” thought Josie. “But I reckon they can’t help it any more than I can resist almost falling out of the window in search of air.”
Someone else was evidently of the same mind, as a window next to the one from which Josie was leaning was raised with some vehemence and an impatient voice, strangely familiar to Josie, exclaimed:
“Gee, but it’s hot in this hole! I hate to think of summer’s coming.”
“And I—ah, how I long for warmth—” drawled a woman’s voice with a foreign accent.
Josie decided it was the Kambourians—mother and son. Then a goodnatured growl from the interior of the room gave evidence that Papa Kambourian was not far off.
“Nom de Dieu—close the window, Roy! Do not you understand that Mamma and I have air enough during the week days to last us over the blessed Sabbath. That is the worst of these United States and all who happen to be born here as were you, mon bon enfant—air always air!”